British Bachelors: Tempting & New: Seduction Never Lies / Holiday with a Stranger / Anything but Vanilla...

Hastily, she counted to ten. ‘Why don’t you both have another beer in the garden,’ she forced herself to suggest. ‘I—I’ll call when it’s ready.’

While the oven was heating, she mixed breadcrumbs with Parmesan and scattered them across the top of the pasta, found and opened a jar of plums she’d bottled the previous autumn to have with ice cream as dessert, and made a simple dressing for the salad.

We’ll have to eat the chicken tonight, she told herself grimly as she put the earthenware dish into the oven, then turned away to lay the table.

All the domestic stuff she could do on autopilot, which was just as well when her mind seemed to have gone into free fall.

Under normal circumstances, she’d have run upstairs to take off what she regarded without pleasure as her ‘school uniform’, change into shorts and maybe a sun-top, and release her hair from its clasp at the nape of her neck. Preparation for a lazy afternoon under the chestnut tree in the garden—with a book and the odd bout of weeding thrown in.

But there was nothing usual about today, and it seemed infinitely safer to stay as she was. To show this interloper that the girl he’d surprised yesterday was a fantasy.

And to demonstrate that this was the real Octavia Denison—efficient, hard-working, responsible and mature. The Vicar’s daughter and therefore the last person in the world to go swimming naked in someone else’s lake.

Except that she had done so, and altering her outer image wasn’t going to change a thing as far as he was concerned. Any more than his lightening of his appearance today had affected her initial impression of him.

She sighed. Her father was a darling but she often wished he was warier with strangers. That he wouldn’t go more than halfway to meet them, with no better foundation for his trust than instinct. Something that had let him down more than once in the past.

Well, she would be cautious for him where Jago Marsh was concerned. In fact, constantly on her guard.

She didn’t know much about his former band Descent but could recall enough to glean the social niceties had not been a priority with them.

Top of her own agenda, however, would be to find out more, because forewarned would indeed be forearmed.

He’s playing some unpleasant game with us, she told herself restively. He has to be, only Dad can’t see it.

Although she suspected it was that faith in the basic goodness of human nature that made her father so popular in the parish, even if his adherence to the traditional forms of worship did not always find favour with the hierarchy in the diocese.

But that was quite another problem.

Whereas—sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof, she thought. Which, in this case, was Jago Marsh.

And she sighed again but this time rather more deeply.

CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_13df0775-c01d-52c8-8cc0-ef117ff16e72)

IT WAS ONE of the most difficult lunches she had ever sat through.

And, to her annoyance, the macaroni cheese was one of her best ever, and Jago Marsh praised it lavishly and had two helpings.

To her utter astonishment, her father had gone down to the dark, cobwebby space which was the Vicarage cellar and produced a bottle of light, dry Italian wine which complemented the food perfectly.

She had turned to him, her eyebrows lifting questioningly. ‘Should Mr Marsh be drinking if he’s driving?’

‘Mr Marsh walked from the Manor,’ Jago had responded, affably. ‘And will return there in the same way.’

Did he mean he’d moved in already? Surely not. The formalities couldn’t have been completed. And how could he possibly be living there anyway with no gas, electricity or water and not a stick of furniture in the place?

Somehow she couldn’t see him camping there with a sleeping bag and portable stove.

If he’d indeed been the traveller she’d first assumed, she knew now that he’d have had the biggest and best trailer on the site with every mod con and then some.

Just as that cheap metal watch, on covert examination, had proved to be a Rolex, and probably platinum.

What she found most disturbing was how genuinely the Vicar seemed to enjoy his company, listening with interest to his stories of the band’s early touring days, carefully cleaned up, she suspected, for the purpose.

While she served the food and sat, taking the occasional sip of wine, and listening, watching, and waiting.

Let people talk and eventually they will betray themselves. Hadn’t she read that somewhere?

But all that their guest seemed to be betraying was charm and self-deprecating humour. Just as if the good opinion of an obscure country clergyman could possibly matter to him.

He’s my father, you bastard, and I love him, she addressed Jago silently and fiercely. And if you hurt him, I’ll find some way to damage you in return. Even if it takes the rest of my life.

‘So, Jago,’ the Vicar said thoughtfully. ‘An interesting name and a derivative of James I believe.’

Jago nodded. ‘My grandmother was Spanish,’ he said. ‘And she wanted me to be christened Iago, as in Santiago de Compostela, but my parents felt that Shakespeare had knocked that name permanently on the head so they compromised with the English version.’

Iago, thought Tavy, who’d studied Othello for her ‘A’ level English exam. One of literature’s most appalling villains. The apparently loyal second in command, turned liar, betrayer and murderer by association. The personification of darkness, if ever there was one.

It felt almost like a warning, and made her even less inclined to trust him.

After the meal, she served coffee in the sitting room. But when she went in with the tray, she found Jago alone, looking at one of the photographs on the mantelpiece.

He said abruptly, not looking round, ‘Your mother was very beautiful.’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘In every way.’

‘Your father must be very lonely without her.’

‘He’s not alone,’ she said, defensively. ‘He has his work and he has me. Also he plays chess with a retired schoolmaster in the village. And...’ She hesitated.

‘Yes?’

‘And he has God.’ She said it reluctantly, expecting some jeering response.

‘I’m sure he does,’ he said. ‘But none of that is what I meant.’

She decided not to pursue that, asking instead, ‘Where is he, anyway?’ as she set the tray down on the coffee table between the two shabby sofas that flanked the fireplace.

‘He went to his study to find a book he’s going to lend me on the history of the Manor.’

‘The past is safe enough,’ she said. ‘It’s what you may do to its future that worries most people.’

‘I met two of my new neighbours on my way here,’ he said. ‘A man on horseback and a woman with a dog. Both of them smiled and said hello, and the dog didn’t bite me, so I wasn’t aware of any tsunami of anxiety heading towards me.’

‘It may seem amusing to you,’ she said. ‘But we’ll have to live with the inevitable upheaval of your celebrity presence—’ she edged the words with distaste ‘—and deal with the aftermath when you get bored and move on.’

‘You haven’t been listening, sweetheart.’ His tone was crisp. ‘The Manor is going to be my home. The only one. And I intend to make it work. Now shall we call a truce before your father comes back? And I take my coffee black without sugar,’ he added. ‘For future reference.’